


this christmas

by screamlet



Category: Political Animals
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Banter, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-24
Updated: 2017-12-24
Packaged: 2019-02-19 11:11:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,838
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13122510
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/screamlet/pseuds/screamlet
Summary: Christmas at Versailles was, maybe, a bit fucking much. Like. Just a bit.Everything was glass. Everything was beautiful. Everything was just a bit fucking much.





	this christmas

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lanyon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lanyon/gifts).



> very loosely based on this prompt: _i'd love to see an au in which tj is the twin who has it together, while still being gay._ thanks for pinch hitting, lanyon!!!!!
> 
> in this production, jay is played by [rahul kohli](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm3418510/mediaviewer/rm103560704).

Christmas at Versailles was, maybe, a bit fucking much. Like. Just a bit. 

Everything was glass. Everything was beautiful. Everything was just a _bit_ fucking much. 

“Excuse me, sir,” Jay announced as he returned to T.J., brandishing fresh drinks for both of them. The nonalcoholic drink of the night was something fruity that turned club soda into genuine fucking magic and it was all _just a bit much_. “You don’t know me—”

T.J. laughed and clinked the edge of his glass with Jay’s. 

“—But I’m _such_ a fan of your work—lord, you must hear that all the time, but I really mean it! What you might not hear a lot, though—oh, I’m going to be so _bad_ , this will put me in so much trouble—”

“You’re not in trouble,” T.J. deadpanned. “You’re my husband.”

Jay laughed and pulled T.J. in for a kiss. “Yeah, look, I was going to tell you for the one millionth time in our lives that you look extremely hot when you’re pensive and smoldering, so I had to leave the Duke of Whatever and come and tell you that.”

“And bring me a new drink,” T. J. said. “Because you’re the best.”

That made Jay’s eyebrows lift a little. “For getting you a drink? Come on. I can do better than that.”

“And you have,” T.J. said. “And you still do things like see me standing around looking like a sad fuck and you come over and bring me this—what the fuck is this, anyway?”

“I dunno,” Jay said. “Some French La Croix knockoff. They put a raspberry in it so you know it’s fresh as hell.” 

T.J. leaned up and kissed Jay, closing his eyes and lingering as he did because, god, maybe it was Versailles, maybe it was the literal apocalypse about to overtake 21st century civilization, maybe it was Christmas, maybe it was his grandma flirting across the room with a guy at least 30 years her junior, but despite all of it—he could have kissed Jay forever.

When T.J. pulled away, Jay almost didn’t let him. He caught T.J., his hand gently cupping T.J.’s jaw, turning his face and nuzzling against T.J.’s cheek. T.J. could feel Jay’s beard brush against his cheek, the way he exhaled when he needed to remember what T.J. smelled like because they had been together so long. These were some of the little weird things T.J. knew about how his husband loved him. 

“I still feel like the skinny dork you met in our first music class at college,” T.J. whispered. 

“Your very cool dude leather jacket wasn’t long enough to cover your wrists,” Jay laughed, his voice so soft and gentle in T.J.’s ear. “What a good thing no one in your family bought you a new jacket for your first day of college, or I wouldn’t have seen those beautiful wrists and fallen in love with you right there. Or your hands, _god_ , have I told you today how perfect your hands are?”

“Like, this morning,” T.J. said. “I almost couldn’t butter my toast, you were watching me so much.”

“It’s a good thing that toast was so appealing, or I would have dragged you right back to bed and we would have been late for everything we had to do today, like have Grandma Barrish all tricked out to find herself a sugar daddy tonight. Wait, sugar baby. Wait, is that really a thing?”

T.J. burst out laughing and looked up at Jay, who held him close, Jay’s drink in one hand and his other hand firm on T.J.’s waist. Versailles had been his grandmother’s idea because some _other_ rich European boyfriend of hers had gotten them tickets for a private Christmas concert and what better way to celebrate, she declared, than taking her two favorite boys.

(Dougie had been in the room to hear the invitation and complain that he _had_ to be one of her favorites because he and T.J. were there _first_. But Dougie was Dougie and he immediately remembered he didn’t have the emotional bandwidth to be their grandmother’s favorite, so he dropped it and wished them all the best.)

“You okay?” Jay asked. “You seem far away.”

T.J. finished his drink and right on cue, a waiter drifted by and offered to relieve him of his glass. Jay held him up for a second, finished his drink as well, then turned to focus on T.J. They weren’t chatting in this crowded room as much as they were holding each other and swaying. The party fell away more and more as the night went on, as Jay held him. T.J. leaned in again and kissed Jay, then rested his head on Jay’s shoulder.

“I’m in a fucking French palace, like, _the_ French palace, on Christmas,” T.J. whispered. “I’m slow dancing with my husband. He ditched a real live duke to grab me a club soda and tell me I look hot. Then he stuck around and looked after me. I’m not dreaming this, am I?”

“If you are, I hope I am, too, and we never wake up,” Jay said. T.J. felt Jay’s arms around him, wrap him up a little warmer in an already warm room. The heat under his skin made T.J. feel buzzed, but this was so much better than alcohol had ever, _ever_ been to him. If any of the hundreds of people in one of the biggest rooms T.J. had ever seen had bothered to look at them, they might have seen T.J. literally glowing, his skin suffused with light. T.J. closed his eyes and tried to imagine what they looked like, if he looked as perfectly, warmly content as he felt. 

“We’re not dreaming,” Jay whispered again. “I’ve been to too many of your family dinners to have dreamed them all.” T.J. laughed and clutched at him. “If _you’re_ dreaming, Dougie won’t have anyone to go see every Marvel movie with him the Thursday night it opens. You wouldn’t do that to him, would you?”

“If that’s really why you were put on Earth, so Dougie wouldn’t be lonely during _Avengers: Infinity Jerk_ , and I kinda just stole you for myself, too—well, that’s okay,” T.J. said. “If you don’t mind. Do you mind?”

“I do not mind, no, not at all,” Jay said. “As long as I get to keep you, too.”

“You do,” T.J. said. “Promise. I promise.”

“I wasn’t kidding,” Jay said. “I know you don’t believe in love at first sight and all that, and you always sigh a little when I say this, but I knew the minute I saw you. I knew you were it. I didn’t know how it would happen, and I didn’t remember your parents were two of the most terrifying people living on the entire planet, but I knew you were it for me.”

“You know when I knew?” T.J. asked. “When you came to my room every night for like, two weeks, because you had to watch _Breathless_ for another class. We’d end up making out every night and you’d still text me the next day like, _Hey wanna try watching it again tonight? I’ll take notes this time!_ ”

“Oh my god,” Jay laughed. “Okay, but in my defense! I was eighteen and I’d never—this boy with the biggest eyes and the most beautiful mouth was talking to me and kissing me and kept wanting to watch the first ten minutes of _Breathless_ with me before he stuck his hand down my pants! Every time I tried it, it worked! I wasn’t going to fuck up something that wasn’t broken!”

“Your hands were there, too,” T.J. said.

“Okay, okay, can we not,” Jay said. “This is the perfect moment for Grandma Barrish to wander by and coach me on grabbing your ass. This shit summons her, I swear.”

T.J. smiled to himself, and smiled more when Jay lifted T.J.’s chin and gently kissed him. 

“You make me happy every day,” Jay said. “I hope I do the same for you.”

“You have no idea,” T.J. said. “You don’t know how happy you make me. I don’t want to know where I’d be without you.”

“Me either,” Jay said. “Fuck that. Let’s not consider it.”

“Sounds great.”

Right on time, Margaret wandered by with a drink in her hand and a young man on her arm. She didn’t even pause as she yelled at Jay, “Jesus, honey, you’ve gotta put your back into it.”

“Margaret, please!” Jay stage-whispered as she hurried away.

“You didn’t call her Grandma,” T.J. said as they watched them disappear into the garden. “That’s like another 5% of my inheritance that’s going to you.”

“Oh my god, don’t say that.”

“What? She’s already looking at condos in Hawaii to give us for a ten-year anniversary. I tried telling her we passed ten years of being together like, five years ago, and then we got into a little argument about how I—well, never mind.”

“How you what?”

T.J. took another moment to stare at Jay, the ridiculous and unbelievably good man he had married, and he smiled at him. He could feel more than a little sadness tucked into his cheek. 

“I told her it was the years we’ve been together that counted, since I never thought I would get married. We couldn’t even _get_ married until we had already been together like, eight years, so. I want my fucking condo now, dammit.”

Jay nodded and lifted his hands to T.J.’s face. Jay’s thumbs stroked across T.J.’s cheekbones as his eyes stared into T.J.’s for one whole eternity of a moment. He kissed T.J., then wrapped him up again. “Let’s see what we can do, okay?” Jay asked. “Like if your grandmother gives us 70% of a condo and we chip in the rest so we can have it for your birthday.”

“Oh, that’s some sappy shit,” T.J. said. “She’ll _love_ that.”

“Really? Not _too_ sappy?”

“Nah, it’s just the right mix of sap and practical that she’s gonna love.”

“Good,” Jay said. “Now we just have to make sure she isn’t abducted by that young man whose name I didn’t get but seemed to be _much_ younger than us.”

“You say that about everyone.”

“I’m a very respectably bearded man in my thirties, Mr. Hammond. I’ve earned the right to glare at the youths of today for stealing your grandmother away.”

“Hey, quick question, what if you steal me away?” T.J. whispered. “Preferably somewhere my grandmother isn’t?”

“Challenge accepted,” Jay said. They linked their hands and moved towards the edge of the ballroom, Jay leading the way and T.J. more than happy to follow wherever he would go. 

**Author's Note:**

> "you're not in trouble, you're my husband" = [shameless reference to this video](http://the-lemon-is-in-play.tumblr.com/post/163039152138/).
> 
> in my personal backstory for t.j. and jay that seeped in as much as it could: t.j. arrived at princeton, fell instantly in love with this handsome gigantosaurus rex in his 8am music theory class, and spent that first fall deciding that he was super into dudes, super into THIS dude jay, and he was cutting himself off from alcohol because it was super unpleasant compared to everything else going on in his life. the first time someone offered t.j. coke at a party, jay was right next to him and shouted, OH MY GOD, ARE YOU THIRSTY, I DIDN'T GET YOU A DRINK, I'M SO SORRY, COME ON, LET'S FIND A DRINK, realizing only when they were three very long strides (and t.j.'s endless cackling) away that he had lost the contest of who in their relationship was the biggest nerd, now and forever. deeply boring habits of sobriety stuck with t.j. as he grew up, and he and jay grew up around each other, becoming that gross couple that stayed together all through college and after and forever and ever. they try to go to hawaii once a year so t.j. can complain about how expensive milk is, even though he only uses it in his cereal.


End file.
